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It's all done ... with mirrors Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Ten-year-old Piper Galt, right, and Kortni Daniels, 8, both of Medford, participate in a dance class at VIBES Main 1 Art Center in Medford. The center, which will be dedicated today, features a 2,000-square-foot dance floor, photo workshop and art space. The Main 1 Art Center opens its floor, creating a new place for dancers to ballet up to the bar By BILL VARBLE With the VIBES Main 1 Art Center due to be unveiled today, workers on Thursday afternoon were still scrambling to lay flooring and install track lighting in the old bank building downtown on Medford's Main Street in what will soon be an art gallery. "It'll all be done in time," director Tom Cole says, standing in the doorway of the gleaming new dance space. The dance studio boasts a 2,000-square-foot, spring-loaded, maple floor, full mirrors and wall railings at different heights. The adjacent gallery is a white-walled room of nearly the same size that's being fitted with lights and getting its new floor. Soft afternoon sun filters through east windows and falls on walls still devoid of artwork. A ribbon cutting and dedication ceremony is to take place today. Private presentations start at 3 p.m.; the public is invited for a preview of art and refreshments from 4 to 5 p.m. At one end of the dance studio is a photo workshop called Firebird Productions; at the other end is a large storage area whose walls are being painted by graffiti artists who on Thursday afternoon seem to have temporarily and mysteriously vanished from the project. Cole's non-profit Kids Unlimited has been in the old bank building about two years, staffed mostly by volunteers and largely dependent on grants. It began in 1998 and is focused on providing services in west Medford, where a lot of kids face special challenges. VIBES, the teen nightclub on the main floor, will continue with dances, dance contests, concerts, pool tables and special events. But the upstairs, dubbed the Main 1 Arts Center, is all new. It comprises the art gallery, the dance studio, the photo space. Some of the programs available to young people age 12 to 20 in the center are art and acting classes, photography, hip-hop dance, breakdancing, graffiti art, ballroom dance and fashion design. "It allows us to get kids who would otherwise never have a chance to participate," Cole says. The new spaces were created with the help of a $15,000 grant from the Carpenter Foundation and a $5,000 grant from the Anna May Family Foundation, both of Medford. "The whole upstairs has been transformed," Cole says. "VIBES is now just a small part of this." VIBES offers young people a weekly drug-, alcohol- and violence-free space with a 10,000-square-foot dance floor, top-notch light and sound systems and disc jockeys. Most Saturdays, it attracts several hundred people to the under-21 site. The gallery also will feature area artists donating part of their profits to the center's after-school and summer education and enrichment programs. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.